Paul McCartney's early British tour

Paul McCartney with his wife, Linda, in 1976 (public domain photo). 

I have been reading The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, which covers McCartney's solo career from 1969 to 1973 in great detail (more than 700 pages.) Volume 2, which covers McCartney from 1974 to 1980, came out in December.

Paul's first tour as a solo artist was a low key affair in February 1972, in which he and an early version of Wings would show up unannounced on college campuses and book shows on the spot for audiences of usually only a few hundred people. (The Kozinn book says the Oxford show on Feb. 23 listed at the link did not take place.) 

As Liverpool has been important to the British Discordian movement, I thought I would share what happened when Paul tried to line up a show there. Of course, Liverpool was the hometown for him and the other three Beatles:

Visiting Merseyside without trying to set up a concert was unthinkable, but cruising the streets of Liverpool unnoticed was impossible for one of the city's best-loved sons. On Sunday afternoon Paul asked his roadies to drive around town and sniff out a venue. Their mission did not go well. Being a Sunday, the University of Liverpool campus was deserted. Quickly devising a backup plan, the brothers-in-law figured one of Liverpool's many playhouses would roll out the red carpet for Paul and his group. Strolling into the Everyman Theatre, Ian found a carpenter fine-tuning the set for a new production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, due to open on February 23. He happily took a message to the theatre's boss, Alan Dosser. "There's a group here called Wings who want to play a gig here tonight," the carpenter ventured. Dosser, not a follower of popular music, and having a schedule to meet, snapped, "Fuck off! Can't they see we're in the middle of a tech! Fuck off!" Walking in late on the conversation, musician Terry Canning dashed out of the theater onto Hope Street to see the van disappearing around the corner.

McCartney's return to the Liverpool concert stage would have to wait. (Page 373.) (Canning composed incidental music for Ken Campbell's production of Illuminatus!). 

The book has very detailed accounts of Paul in the recording studio and his interactions with other musicians, record producers and recording engineers. I knew who some of these folks are (e.g. Alan Parsons), but some of my favorite bits in the book describe encounters with more obscure figures, who suddenly find themselves working with the most famous pop musician in the world. Here's a bit about a guy named Paul Beaver:

"On Thursday afternoon I was scheduled to do a session at Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, but they wouldn't tell me who it was for," Beaver remembered with a smile. "I got there, set up the synthesizer and I sat in the recording engineer chair behind the console. Then this guy walked into the control room and with an intimidating English accent said,  'Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?' It was Paul!" (Pages 244-245).